Lootcrate - Cyber

Lootcrate is a subscription service that every month sends you a box full of stuff from movies, tv series, cartoons, comics and video-games. Every month they have a theme and I was invited to illustrate their promo image for this month's theme: CYBER

The idea was to draw each letter of the word as a character/element from a franchise featured in the box. They suggested I drew the C as a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica and I ran with the concept.

C is a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica

Y is a light cycle from Tron

B is the spinner from Blade Runner

E is Optimus Prime's fist smashing the ground

R is the T800 from the Terminator movies

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Process

Planning Since it was set the illustration would center around the letters in Cyber and the client asked for each on to look like an object, I started by choosing a font and projecting it in an isometric view. This made it easier to block the overall composition of the piece and also help mantain the readability throughout the process.

Rough Sketch Using the base vector as a guide I sketched the elements I wanted from each movie and came up with ideas to transform each one into its nerdy version. This was a fairly quick sketch, just to present my ideas to the client.

Cleaned Up Sketch After the first sketch was approved I refined the drawing paying a lot more attention to references. I think this step is actually more important to me than to the client, I find it a LOT easier to take every design decision as possible before going to Illustrator. This is the base for my final illustration.

Base Vector Drawing in isometric view to me seems a lot more like playing with the Legos than drawing. In the sketching stage I was a bit worried the E wasn't going to be readable, but in the end I think it's my favorite one from the lot.

Shadows, Highlights and Effects To tie everything together and make everything look cooler basically. I also threw a bunch of movement lines, smoke, explosions... anything I could think of to make the illustration less static.

Final Illustration Some extra shadows and textures in Photoshop. I was really thinking about the readibility at this point and trying to tie everything together a little more.